Barnard's Star B, The Nearest Super-Earth

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Barnard’s Star b,
the nearest
super-Earth
Bennu, “Didymoon”
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TRAPPIST- 1 planets,
a panspermia testbed
• Most detailed observations of material orbiting close to a black hole
• Two stars almost touching found inside a planetary nebula
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BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF SCIENTIFIC
4
AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION Barnard’s Star b, the nearest super-Earth
FREELY AVAILABLE THROUGH Barnard’s Star, which for over a century has held the record of the star with the fastest apparent motion
THE INTERNET in our night sky, houses a cold super-Earth that could soon be photographed directly. This planet is the
second closest among the known extrasolar ones and one day it will perhaps become a destination for...
January-February 2019
12
Most detailed observations of material orbiting close to a black hole
ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer has been used by scientists
from a consortium of European institutions, including ESO, to observe flares of infrared radiation coming
from the accretion disc around Sagittarius A*, the massive object at the heart of the Milky Way. The...
16
ALMA maps Europa’s temperature
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has a chaotic surface terrain that is fractured and cracked, suggesting a long-
standing history of geologic activity. A new series of four images of Europa taken with the Atacama
Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has helped astronomers create the first global thermal...
20
Two stars almost touching found inside a planetary nebula
An international team of astronomers, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Universidad
de La Laguna (ULL) investigator David Jones, have discovered a binary system with an orbital period of just
a little over three hours. The discovery, which involved several years of observing campaigns, is not only...
English edition of the magazine
22
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Bennu, “Didymoon” and Planetary Defense
The OSIRIS-REx probe reached its goal, the asteroid Bennu, and entered its scientific phase. This mission,
Editor in chief together with the Hayabusa2 probe around the asteroid Ryugu and other missions in an advanced phase
Michele Ferrara of design, are expressions of the will to defend our planet from possible collisions with the rocky bodies...
Scientific advisor
Prof. Enrico Maria Corsini
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CERN, ALMA and ESO launch art residency program, Symmetry
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Astro Publishing di Pirlo L. The Symmetry program was launched to foster interdisciplinary exchange between artists and scientists
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TRAPPIST-1 planets, a panspermia testbed
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Gaia uncovers major event in the formation of the Milky Way
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4 PLANETOLOGY
Barnard’s Star b,
the nearest
super-Earth
by Michele Ferrara
revised by Damian G. Allis
NASA Solar System Ambassador
Barnard’s Star, which for over a

century has held the record of
the star with the fastest appar-
ent motion in our night sky,
houses a cold super-Earth that
could soon be photographed di-
rectly. This planet is the second
closest among the known extra-
solar ones and one day it will
perhaps become a destination
for the first interstellar probes.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019
PLANETOLOGY 5
T
A
he nearest single star to little over a century ago, the American astronomer Edward Emerson
the Sun hosts an exo- Barnard, already famous for having discovered fifteen comets,
planet at least 3.2 times as measured the proper motion of a star of magnitude 9.5 in the con-
massive as Earth — a so-
stellation of Ophiuchus, obtaining a surprising value: 10.3 arcseconds per
called super-Earth. Data from
year. Barnard had discovered the fastest star in the night sky, so fast that it
a worldwide array of tele-
scopes, including ESO’s
covers an angle the size of the full moon in 180 years.
planet-hunting HARPS instru- Usually, the more an object appears to move quickly in the sky, the closer it
ment, have revealed this is to the observer, and, in fact, that star is only 6 light years away. Only the
frozen, dimly lit world. The components of the Alpha Centauri triple system are closer to the Sun.
newly discovered planet is
the second-closest known ex-
oplanet to the Earth and or-
bits the fastest moving star in
our night sky. This image
shows an artist’s impression
of the planet’s surface.
[ESO/M. Kornmesser]
On the right, a video from
the ESOcast Light series in-
troducing the discovery of
Barnard’s Star b. [ESO]
The fast motion and the relative proximity

of that star made Barnard even more famed,
between 1916 and 1962, the astronomer no-
ticed small oscillations in the straight motion G raphical repre-
sentation of
the relative dis-
to the point that his name has since been in- of the star, explainable with the presence of
dissolubly linked to the star. a body 1.6 times more massive than Jupiter, tances between
the nearest stars
Today we know that Barnard’s Star is a typi- that from a distance of 4.4 AU pulled the
and the Sun.
cal red dwarf, considerably older than the star towards itself by rotating around it. The
Barnard’s Star is
Sun and therefore quieter than younger red announcement of the discovery had a re- the second closest
dwarfs, whose surface often shows particu- markable resonance because at that time star system to the
larly severe flares. The last of these events at the only known planets were those in our Sun and the near-
Barnard’s Star occurred about twenty years Solar System, and to tell the truth little was est single star to
ago and doubled the surface temperature. known even of them. our Solar System.
In the decades following the discovery by As usual, other astronomers went to work to On the left, the
Barnard, astrometry continued to be funda- verify the discovery, and in the 1970s it be- high apparent mo-
mental to the work on this star by many as- came clear that the anomalies found by van tion of V2500
tronomers, who continued to measure the de Kamp were not attributable to a planet, Ophiuchi, or Bar-
positions of the star on photographic plates but to a problem of the 24-inch refractor op- nard’s Star, from
the 1950s to 2018.
in order to improve es-
timates of parallax and
proper motion.
Among those as-
tronomers was Peter
van de Kamp, Dutch
by birth and American
by adoption, who was
director of observato-
ries and a university
professor. In the late
1960s, van de Kamp
became quite famous
for announcing the
discovery of a planet in
orbit around Barnard’s
Star. Examining photo-
graphic plates taken
PLANETOLOGY 7
T his wide-field
image shows
the surroundings
of the red dwarf
known as Bar-
nard’s Star in the
constellation of
Ophiuchus (the
Serpent-Bearer).
This picture was
created from the
material forming
part of the Digi-
tized Sky Survey
2. The center of
the image shows
Barnard’s Star
captured in three
different expo-
sures. The star is
the fastest mov-
ing star in the
night sky and its
large apparent
motion can be
seen as its posi-
tion changes be-
tween successive
observations —
shown in red, yel-
low and blue.
[ESO/Digitized
Sky Survey 2.
Davide De Martin
E – Red Dots]
tics with which the plates were taken: cu- short, that planet did not exist. However, the
riously, each time the objective lens was re- interest of astronomers in Barnard’s Star has
moved, cleaned and reassembled, the color- never diminished. Because of its proximity to
dependent image scale of the stellar images our planet, it has continued to be a very
changed. It is for this reason that the same, studied object with astrometric, photometric
presumed oscillations were then noticed also and spectroscopic techniques.
for many other stars, and it is again for this The last two decades of data, gathered in
reason that van de Kamp and some of his seven prestigious observatories, have
collaborators were convinced they had al- merged into a study linked to the Red Dots
ready discovered other planetary systems, project (which in 2016 produced the discov-
later proved as non-existent. ery of Proxima Centauri b). This collective
In spite of the evidence of equipment being study has now made real the original illusion
responsible for the observed oscillations, van of van de Kamp through the discovery of a
de Kamp advocated his discovery in special- planet in orbit around Barnard’s Star.
ized magazines until the 1980s. By this time, The achievement was realized thanks to the
the precision of other radial velocity meas- synergy of about sixty researchers, belong-
urements had imposed for the mass of the ing to about thirty scientific institutes, who
alleged planet a much lower limit than that combined almost 800 measurements of ra-
calculated by van de Kamp, insufficiently dial velocities, all performed using high-res-
small to produce the observed effects. In olution spectral lines of the star.
8 PLANETOLOGY
Let’s open a brief parenthesis on this survey

technique, to remind by summary how it
covered Barnard’s Star b (led by Ignasi Ribas,
Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, I n the back-
ground, an
artistic view of
works. Each star moves in the galaxy and, IEEC, and Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, CSIC,
regardless of its real spatial trajectory, we Barcelona) worked based on this high-reso- Barnard’s Star b
seen from space.
can see it moving away or approaching (it lution radial velocity measurement method.
[ESO/M. Korn-
rarely appears motionless). If the star moves The study started by reviewing archive
messer]
away, the lines of the chemical elements vis- data collected from the end of the last cen-
ible in its spectrum will be slightly redshifted tury through 2015. The database had sug-
when compared to the reference lines pro- gested the presence of a potentially sig-
duced in the laboratory. If the star ap- nificant signal, with a period of about 230
proaches, the shift of the lines will be days, but without a sufficient sampling to
towards the blue. In any case, for each star, accurately characterize it. To confirm and
we can know the exact value of the dis- understand the nature of that signal, the
placement, which remains unchanged for
millennia if in the meantime no
mass intervenes to modify it. A
planet orbiting a star can
make the radial velocity
oscillate significantly.
The magnitude of the
oscillation essen-
tially depends on
the mass of the
star, the mass of
the planet, the
distance separat-
ing the two bod-
ies, and their
position with re-
spect to the ob-
server. The farther
the planet moves
from the straight line
passing through the
star and the observer,
the lower the oscillation in
the radial velocity of the star
will be. An Earth-sized planet can
displace a dwarf star no more than a
few meters per second, an amount easily
achieved by phenomena related to the mag-
netic activity of the star and the mass differ-
ence between the two objects. All of these
radial velocity details underline that the
search for non-transiting extrasolar planets
requires high power instruments and very
high-resolution spectroscopes, as well as
long periods of observation. The large team
of researchers mentioned above who dis-
T his video shows Barnard’s Star and its

super-Earth. [ESO/M. Kornmesser]
research team undertook, from 2016 to

2017, a monitoring campaign with the
spectrometer CARMENES (Calar Alto high-
Resolution search for M dwarfs with Ex-
oearths with Near-infrared and optical
Échelle Spectrographs) at the Observatorio
de Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), collecting ra-
dial velocity measurements so precise as to
detect differences of 1 m/s. These data have
been integrated with equally accurate data
gathered with other high-resolution spec-
trographs, such as ESO’s HARPS and UVES,
in Chile, and Telescopio Nazionale Galileo’s
HARPS-N, in the Canary Islands.
I n this video, we fly over the surface of

Barnard’s Star b. [ESO/M. Kornmesser]
10
The combination of new measurements tance in the Barnard’s Star

with the archive datasets clearly showed a system corresponds roughly
signal with a periodicity of 233 days, and to the so-called “snow
also revealed a fainter long-term modula- line”, where volatile ele-
tion. ments such as water are
The 233-day periodicity originates from a present in the solid-
variation in the radial velocity of just 1.2 state. A planet orbit-
m/s, a shift that could easily be produced by ing in this region
the photospheric activity. However, the re- would only receive
searchers are 99% confident they can rule 2% of the energy
out this possibility because Barnard’s Star the Earth receives
shows an extremely low level of magnetic from the Sun and,
activity, a minimum X-ray flow, an imper- accordingly, the sur-
ceptible emission in H-alpha, and negligible face temperature
chromospheric emission. of Barnard’s Star b
Independent photometric and spectroscopic should range be-
monitoring has indicated a rotation period tween -150°C and
of the star of 140 ± 10 days, which leads the -170°C. The pre-
researchers to exclude the possibility that dicted temperature
the 233-days signal is in any way related to of this planet is
surface structures, such as unexpectedly therefore not habit-
long-lasting active regions. The fact that the able for life as we
star is between 6 and 11 billion year old also know it, although
favors a very mild magnetic activity, unable this could possibly be
of producing persistent phenomena for mitigated by the pres-
decades. ence of a thick atmos-
For all these reasons, Ribas and colleagues phere. The mass could
have come to the conclusion that this signal also represent an addi-
is more easily explained if produced by a tional hurdle: the calcu-
planetary companion, with a minimum lated value of 3.2 Earth
mass of 3.2 Earth masses, placed on a low- masses must be considered as
eccentricity orbit, and with a semi-major a minimum limit, valid for a
axis greater than about 0.4 AU. This dis- planet which, although non-
transiting in front
of and behind the
disk, is very close to
the visual line in the
points of maximum ap-
proach and maximum dis-
tance from the observer. As
the deviation from this line
increases, the value of the
mass grows at the same
pace. In the most favorable
of possible configurations,
Barnard’s Star b weighs a lit-
tle more than three times
that of Earth. For this rea-
son, it falls into the category
T his animation shows the stars closest to the Sun and highlights of super-Earths, the type of
the position of Barnard’s Star. [ESO/L. Calçada/ Vladimir Roma- planet that is most fre-
nyuk (spaceengine.org). Music: Astral Electronics] quently discovered in orbit
11
mature star system, could question

some aspects of planetary migra-
tion theories, which disadvan-
tage the maintenance of a
planet within its original or-
bit. It is, however, possible
that Barnard’s Star b has not
migrated because not per-
turbed in its orbital motion
either by the residual dust
of the protoplanetary disk
or by other orbiting plan-
ets. This does not ex-
clude, in any way, that
another planet may exist
much farther away in
this system, whose pres-
ence could be associated
with the long-term mod-
ulation mentioned above.
With reference to this
possibility, the article pub-
lished by the research team
last November in Nature
suggested the existence of a
second planet with a mini-
mum mass equal to 15 Earth
masses in orbit at 4 AU from
the star, but the existence of this
second planet is just a hypothesis.
On the contrary, the existence of
Barnard’s Star b is almost certain,
which becomes the second exoplanet
closest to us after Proxima Centauri b
(which is more “similar” to the Earth).
When the technology is mature enough to
send probes to the nearest planetary sys-
tems, Barnard’s Star b will be one of the first
destinations; in the meantime, we will cer-
tainly be able to photograph it directly and
around to characterize it with sufficient precision. If
low-mass it travels through the expected orbit, it
stars, a sce- should move away 220 milliarcseconds from
nario which gives its star, a sufficient angular distance to make
credibility to the results it visible in the most powerful telescopes
of the Ribas team. that will be available to astronomers in the
A n artistic
vision of
Barnard’s Star b,
It is interesting to note that current
theories of planetary formation predict that
imminent future. Although there is no hope
of revealing biomarkers in its atmosphere,
the snow-line is the most favorable distance the direct study of Barnard’s Star b will allow
lit by the red light
of the star. [IEEC/ for the birth of super-Earths. Discovering us to better understand a type of planet
Science-Wave – one of these planets in the orbit within that, although common in the galaxy, is not
Guillem Ramisa] which it most likely formed, and in such a present in our own Solar System. !
chronicles EN_l'Astrofilo 25/12/2018 11:59 Page 12
12 SPACE CHRONICLES
Most detailed observation

material orbiting close to
black hole
by ESO
E SO's exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to

the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the
centre of the Milky Way. New observations show clumps of gas swirling around
at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside a four million
solar mass black hole — the first time material has been observed orbiting close
to the point of no return, and the most detailed observations yet of material
orbiting this close to a black hole. This visualisation uses data from simulations
of orbital motions of gas swirling around at about 30% of the speed of light on
a circular orbit around the black hole. [ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçada]
SPACE CHRONICLES 13
ons of E
SO’s GRAVITY instrument on nate from material orbiting very
the Very Large Telescope (VLT) close to the black hole’s event hori-
Interferometer has been used zon — making these the most de-
by scientists from a consortium of tailed observations yet of material
to a European institutions, including

ESO, to observe flares of infrared ra-
diation coming from the accretion
disc around Sagittarius A*, the mas-
orbiting this close to a black hole.
While some matter in the accretion
disc — the belt of gas orbiting Sagit-
tarius A* at relativistic speeds — can
sive object at the heart of the Milky orbit the black hole safely, anything
Way. The observed flares provide that gets too close is doomed to be
long-awaited confirmation that the pulled beyond the event horizon.
object in the centre of our galaxy is, The closest point to a black hole that
as has long been assumed, a super- material can orbit without being ir-
massive black hole. The flares origi- resistibly drawn inwards by the im-
T his visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constella-
tion of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky
Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far
more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed in infrared
images. This view was created from photographs in red and blue light and
forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The field of view is approximately
3.5 degrees x 3.6 degrees. [ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment:
Davide De Martin and S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)]
14 SPACE CHRONICLES
mense mass is known as the inner-

most stable orbit, and it is from here
that the observed flares originate.
T he central
parts of our
Galaxy, the
“It’s mind-boggling to actually wit- Milky Way, as
ness material orbiting a massive observed in the
black hole at 30% of the speed of near-infrared
light,” marvelled Oliver Pfuhl, a with the NACO
scientist at the MPE. “GRAVITY’s instrument on
ESO's Very
tremendous sensitivity has allowed
Large Telescope.
us to observe the accretion processes By following the
in real time in unprecedented de- motions of the
tail.” These measurements were most central
only possible thanks to international stars over more
collaboration and state-of-the-art than 16 years,
instrumentation. astronomers
The GRAVITY instrument which were able to de-
termine the
made this work possible combines
mass of the su-
the light from four telescopes of permassive
ESO’s VLT to create a virtual super- black hole that
telescope 130 metres in diameter, lurks there.
and has already been used to probe [ESO/S. Gillessen
the nature of Sagittarius A*. Earlier et al.]
this year, GRAVITY and SINFONI, an-
other instrument on the VLT, al- the effects predicted by Einstein’s keep an eye on Sagittarius A*,” ex-
lowed the same team to accurately general relativity in such an extreme plained Pfuhl. “During our observa-
measure the close fly-by of the star environment. During S2’s close fly- tions, we were lucky enough to
S2 as it passed through the extreme by, strong infrared emission was also notice three bright flares from
gravitational field near Sagittarius observed. “We were closely moni- around the black hole — it was a
A*, and for the first time revealed toring S2, and of course we always lucky coincidence!”
This emission, from highly energetic
electrons very close to the black
hole, was visible as three prominent
bright flares, and exactly matches
theoretical predictions for hot spots
orbiting close to a black hole of four
million solar masses. The flares are
thought to originate from magnetic
interactions in the very hot gas or-
biting very close to Sagittarius A*.
Reinhard Genzel, of the Max Planck
Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
(MPE) in Garching, Germany, who
led the study, explained: “This al-
ways was one of our dream projects
but we did not dare to hope that it
would become possible so soon.”
Referring to the long-standing as-
T his video starts with a wide view of the Milky Way and then zooms into
a visualization of data from simulations of orbital motions of gas swirling
around at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit around the su-
sumption that Sagittarius A* is a su-
permassive black hole, Genzel con-
cluded that “the result is a resound-
permassive black hole Sagittarius A*. [ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçada/N.
Risinger (skysurvey.org)]
ing confirmation of the massive
black hole paradigm”. !
16 SPACE CHRONICLES
ALMA maps
Europa’s temperature
by ALMA Observatory
J
upiter’s icy moon Europa has a
chaotic surface terrain that is
fractured and cracked, suggest-
ing a long-standing history of geo-
logic activity.
A new series of four images of Eu-
ropa taken with the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA) has helped astronomers cre-
ate the first global thermal map of
this cold satellite of Jupiter. The new
images have a resolution of roughly
200 kilometers, sufficient to study
the relationship between surface
thermal variations and the moon’s
major geologic features.
The researchers compared the new
ALMA observations of Europa to a
thermal model based on observa-
tions from the Galileo spacecraft.
This comparison allowed them to
analyze the temperature changes in
the data and construct the first-ever
global map of Europa’s thermal
characteristics. The new data also re-
vealed an enigmatic cold spot on Eu-
ropa’s northern hemisphere.
“These ALMA images are really in-
teresting because they provide the
first global map of Europa’s thermal
A LMA image of Jupiter’s moon

Europa. ALMA was able to map
out thermal variations on its sur-
face. Hubble image of Jupiter in the
background. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO),
S. Trumbo et al.; NRAO/AUI NSF,
S. Dagnello; NASA/Hubble]
SPACE CHRONICLES 17
emission,” said Samantha Trumbo, a

planetary scientist at the California
Institute of Technology and lead au-
S eries of 4 images of the surface
of Europa taken with ALMA, en-
abling astronomers to create the
thor on a paper published in The As- first global thermal map of Jupiter’s
trophysical Journal. “Since Europa is icy moon. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO),
an ocean world with potential geo- S. Trumbo et al.]
logic activity, its surface tempera-
tures are of great interest because extents of any such activity.” Evi-
they may constrain the locations and dence strongly suggests that be-
neath its thin veneer
of ice, Europa has an
ocean of briny water in
contact with a rocky
core. Europa also has a
comparatively young
surface, only about 20
to 180 million years old,
indicating that there
are as-yet-unidentified
thermal or geologic
processes at work.
Unlike optical tele-
scopes, which can only
detect sunlight re-
flected by planetary
bodies, radio and mil-
limeter-wave tele-
scopes like ALMA can
detect the thermal
“glow” naturally emit-
ted by even relatively
cold object in our Solar
System, including com-
ets, asteroids, and
moons.
At its warmest, Eu-
ropa’s surface tempera-
ture never rises above
minus 160 degrees Cel-
sius (minus 260 degrees
Fahrenheit).
“Studying Europa’s
thermal properties pro-
vides a unique means
of understanding its
surface,” said Bryan
Butler, an astronomer
at the National Radio
Astronomy Observa-
tory in Socorro, New
Mexico, and coauthor
on the paper. !
18 SPACE CHRONICLES
First light for

SPECULOOS
by ESO dant — comprising about 15% of
the stars in the nearby universe.
SPECULOOS is designed to explore
1000 such stars, including the near-
T
he SPECULOOS Southern Ob- est, brightest, and smallest, in search
servatory (SSO) has been of Earth-sized habitable planets.
successfully installed at the “SPECULOOS gives us an unprece-
Paranal Observatory and has ob- dented ability to detect terrestrial
tained its first engineering and cali- planets eclipsing some of our small-
bration images — a process known est and coolest neighbouring stars,”
as first light. After finishing this elaborated Michaël Gillon of the
commissioning phase, this new array University of Liège, principal investi-
of planet-hunting telescopes will gator of the SPECULOOS project.
begin scientific operations, starting “This is a unique opportunity to un-
in earnest in January 2019. cover the details of these nearby
SSO is the core facility of a new exo- worlds.”
planet-hunting project called Search SPECULOOS will search for exoplan-
for habitable Planets EClipsing ets using the transit method, follow-
ULtra-cOOl Stars (SPECULOOS), and ing the example of its prototype
consists of four telescopes equipped TRAPPIST-South telescope at ESO’s
with 1-metre primary mirrors. La Silla Observatory. That telescope
The telescopes — named Io, Europa, has been operational since 2011 and
Ganymede and Callisto after the detected the famous TRAPPIST-1
four Galilean moons of Jupiter — planetary system. As a planet passes
will enjoy pristine observing condi- in front of its star it blocks some of
tions at the Paranal site, which is the star’s light — essentially causing
also home to ESO’s flagship Very a small partial eclipse — resulting in
Large Telescope (VLT). Paranal pro-
vides a near-perfect site for astron-
a subtle but detectable dimming of
the star. Exoplanets with smaller T he telescopes of the SPECULOOS Southern Ob-
servatory gaze out into the stunning night sky
over the Atacama Desert, Chile. [ESO/ P. Horálek]
omy, with dark skies and a stable, host stars block more of their star’s
arid climate. These telescopes have light during a transit, making these
a momentous task — SPECULOOS periodic eclipses much easier to de- planets will be ideally suited for fol-
aims to search for potentially habit- tect than those associated with low-up observations with large
able Earth-sized planets surrounding larger stars. Thus far, only a small ground- or space-based facilities.
ultra-cool stars or brown dwarfs, fraction of the exoplanets detected “The telescopes are kitted out with
whose planetary populations are by this method have been Earth- cameras that are highly sensitive in
still mostly unexplored. Only a few sized or smaller. However, the small the near-infrared,” explained Laeti-
exoplanets have been found orbit- size of the SPECULOOS target stars tia Delrez of the Cavendish Labora-
ing such stars, and even fewer lie combined with the high sensitivity tory, Cambridge, a co-investigator in
within their parent star’s habitable of its telescopes allows detection of the SPECULOOS team. “This radia-
zone. Even though these dim stars Earth-sized transiting planets lo- tion is a little beyond what human
are hard to observe, they are abun- cated in the habitable zone. These eyes can detect, and is the primary
SPACE CHRONICLES 19
emission from the dim stars SPECU- The project will in due course also The ELT will be able to observe plan-
LOOS will be targeting.” include the SPECULOOS Northern ets detected by SPECULOOS in un-
The telescopes and their brightly Observatory and SAINT-Ex, which precedented detail — perhaps even
coloured mounts were built by the are currently under construction in analysing their atmospheres. “These
German company ASTELCO and are Tenerife, Spain, and at San Pedro new telescopes will allow us to in-
protected by domes made by the Mártir, Mexico, respectively. There is vestigate nearby Earth-like worlds
Italian manufacturer Gambato. The also potential for an exciting future in the Universe in greater detail
project will receive support from collaboration with the Extremely than we could have imagined only
the two TRAPPIST 60-cm telescopes, Large Telescope (ELT), ESO’s future ten years ago,” concluded Gillon.
one at ESO’s La Silla Observatory flagship telescope, currently under “These are tremendously exciting
and the other in Morocco. construction on Cerro Armazones. times for exoplanet science.” !
20 SPACE CHRONICLES
Two stars almost

touching found inside
a planetary nebula
by IAC
A
n interna- lished in the pres-
tional team tigious scientific
of astron- journal Monthly
omers, led by the Notices of the
Instituto de Astro- Royal Astronomical
física de Canarias Society (MNRAS).
(IAC) and Universi- Planetary nebulae
dad de La Laguna are the glowing
(ULL) investigator shells of gas and
David Jones, have dust ejected from
discovered a bi- Sun-like stars to-
nary system with wards the ends
an orbital period of their lives. “In
of just a little over many cases, we see
three hours. The that the ejection
discovery, which is driven by the in-
involved several teraction between
years of observing the progenitor star
campaigns, is not and a close com-
only surprising due panion, and this
to the extremely leads to the vast
short orbital pe- array of elaborate
riod but also in shapes and struc-
that, due to their tures we see in the
proximity to one nebulae”, explains
another, the sys- Jones.
tem may result in a The study focused
nova explosion be- on the planetary
fore the short-lived nebula M3-1, a
nebula has dissi- firm candidate to
pated.
The results of the
A n image obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope of the planetary
nebula M3-1, the central star of which is actually a binary system with
one of the shortest orbital periods known. [David Jones / Daniel López - IAC]
have been the
product of a binary
study were pub- system due to its
SPACE CHRONICLES 21
spectacular jets,
which are typically
formed by the in-
teraction of two
stars. According to
Brent Miszalski, a
researcher at the
SALT telescope in
South Africa and
co-author of the
work, “We knew it
had to contain a bi-
nary, that’s why we
decided to study
the system to try to
understand the re-
lationship between
the stars and the
H
nebula they have ST archival imagery of M 3-1 showing its remarkable filamentary nucleus and extended jet-
formed”. The ob- like structures. [Jones et al.]
servations quickly
confirmed the researchers’ suspi- separation between the stars to be, masses, temperatures and sizes of
cions. “When we began observing it approximately, 160,000 kilometers, both stars. “To our surprise, we dis-
was immediately clear that it was, in- or less than half the distance be- covered that the two stars were
deed, a binary. Moreover, the bright- tween the Moon and the Earth. quite big and that, as they are so
ness of the system was changing very After various observing campaigns close to one another, it is very likely
quickly and this could mean a rather in Chile with ESO’s Very Large Tele- that they will begin to interact again
short orbital period”, says Henri Bof- scope (VLT) and New Technology Tel- in just another few thousand years
fin, a researcher at the European escope (NTT), the researchers had perhaps resulting in nova explosion”
Southern Observatory (ESO) in Ger- enough data to work out the prop- adds Paulina Sowicka, PhD student
many. In fact, the study revealed the erties of the binary system, like the at the Nicolas Copernicus Astronom-
ical Center in Poland.
The result contradicts current theo-
ries of binary stellar evolution which
predict that, upon forming the plan-
etary nebula, the two stars should
take quite a long time before begin-
ning to interact again. By the time
they do, the nebula should have dis-
persed and should no longer be visi-
ble. However, a nova explosion in
2007, known as Nova Vul 2007, was
found to be inside another planetary
nebula, putting into question the
models. “In the case of M3-1, we
have found a candidate to experi-
ence a similar evolution. Given that
the stars are almost touching, they
shouldn’t take too long before inter-
acting again and, perhaps, produc-
T his animation shows the orbits of the almost touching stars inside the
planetary nebula M3-1. [Jones et al.] ing another nova inside a planetary
nebula”, concludes Jones. !
bennu EN_l'Astrofilo 25/12/2018 11:56 Page 22
22 SMALL BODIES
Bennu, “Didym
and Planetary
by Michele Ferrara
SMALL BODIES 23
ymoon”
Defense
The OSIRIS-REx probe reached its goal, the asteroid Bennu, and en-
tered its scientific phase. This mission, together with the Hayabusa2
probe around the asteroid Ryugu and other missions in an advanced
phase of design, are expressions of the will to defend our planet from
possible collisions with the rocky bodies that periodically cross Earth’s
orbit. We are still far from a global coordination of these initiatives,
but the first steps have moved us in the right direction.
I
O
n the background, n December 3rd, after traveling over pear at first sight very similar to each other.
a depiction of the two years and more than two billion After arriving near the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx
meteoroid 2018 LA, kilometers, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe started a series of approach maneuvers,
which disintegrated
(Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource which at the end of December ended with
on June 6th, 2018 in
Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) its insertion into operational orbit, just over
the atmosphere
above Botswana finally reached the asteroid Bennu. This 1 km above the Bennu surface. The probe
just 4 days after its mission is almost a photocopy of the Japan- then conducted a preliminary survey of the
discovery. [NASA/ ese probe Hayabusa2 at the asteroid Ryugu Bennu surface structures from a polar orbit.
JPL-Caltech] and, incredibly, the two asteroids even ap- Bennu has a diameter of only 492 meters,
24 SMALL BODIES
Researchers expect to
get information about A series of
radar images
of the asteroid
the composition and
initial conditions of Bennu, recorded
our Solar System, and in September 1999
to understand if and by the Goldstone’s
Deep Space Net-
how the primeval ma-
work antenna.
terial brought to Earth
Despite the poor
by asteroids may have
resolution, the
contributed to enrich- shape is already
ing our planet with recognizable, as
the organic com- confirmed (below)
pounds from which by the OSIRIS-REx
life was established. probe. [NASA/JPL-
making it the smallest body ever orbited by The in-depth study of Bennu (as well as Caltech/Goddard/
a probe. The scientific objectives of this first that of Ryugu) has another remarkable University of
phase are to improve the estimates of the goal – to understand the compactness of its Arizona]
physical properties
and the rotational
period of Bennu,
and to create a
more precise model
of its shape. By ex-
amining the images
and the data gath-
ered with a suite of
five scientific in-
struments, mission
technicians will be
able to select the
most suitable site
for collecting the
only sample of de-
bris and regolith
scheduled from the
mission. This will
happen in about a
year, after which
the collected sam-
ple, weighing at
least 60 grams, will
be brought back to
our planet, where it
is expected to land
in Utah in Septem-
ber, 2023. The goals
of the laboratory
analysis of the ma-
terial taken from
Bennu are the same
as those of the
Hayabusa2 mission.
SMALL BODIES 25
Bennu. It is no coincidence that

NASA has chosen it as a subject
to be studied carefully in the
two years of planned scientific
activity.
From a dynamic point of view,
researchers are particularly in-
terested in non-gravitational
forces – the less predictable ones
– that move the asteroid. The
most relevant of these forces is
known as the “Yarkovsky ef-
fect,” which consists of a small
push that the asteroid gives to
itself when, by rotating on its
axis, it releases from its night-
side hemisphere the heat accu-
mulated when that hemisphere
was exposed to solar radiation.
However small the push may be,
A sequence of
images taken
by the OSIRIS-REx
internal structure by accurately measuring
its mass, thus offering us insights into a
any variation of orbital parameters that
may unexpectedly result are amplified over
possible weakness of this type of poten- the long run by gravitational perturbations
probe that shows tially dangerous, Earth-crossing asteroid. produced by the planets and other massive
Bennu in a com-
We know of almost two thousand small as- bodies. The more the asteroid’s position is
plete rotation from
teroids that, in the not too distant future projected into the future, the more the
a distance of about
80 km. The Poly- (astronomically speaking), could threaten margin of error attributable to gravita-
Cam probe camera our planet. One of the most worrying is tional perturbations increases – and that
obtained 36 frames
of 2.2 milliseconds
over a period of 4
hours and 18 min-
utes. [NASA’s God-
dard Space Flight
Center/University
of Arizona]
Alongside, a com-
parison of the as-
teroids Bennu and
Ryugu. [NASA]
26 SMALL BODIES
position becomes even

more uncertain if other
forces less quantifiable
than the gravitational
ones are acting on the
motion of the asteroid. In
this context, the Yarkov-
sky effect is decidedly dif-
ficult to quantify, as its
intensity and efficiency
depend on the reflectiv-
ity, composition, distribu-
tion, and the structure of
the surface material.
It is evident that only in
situ studies of individual
types of surface can pro-
vide comprehensive in-
formation, making such
missions as OSIRIS-Rex of
great importance.
By means of mathematical simulations, as-
tronomers have already calculated how the
mass of our planet and the mass of the
Moon. This makes the position of the aster- T his render
shows OSIRIS-
REx touching as-
orbit of Bennu will change in the future, oid quite uncertain after its close en-
counter in 2060, when Bennu will be about teroid Bennu with
taking into account the gravitational per-
the Touch-And-Go
turbations it will suffer from the Sun, the twice the distance of the Moon away
Sample Arm
planets, the Moon, and other asteroids. A within a window of space 30 km wide.
Mechanism or
rough estimate of the Yarkovsky effect was Even a minute inaccuracy in the current TAGSAM. [NASA’s
also included in the calculation. The results forecasts could be dangerously amplified in Goddard Space
of the simulations say that in 2054, 2060, the following encounters, and this window Flight Center]
2080 and 2135, Bennu will pass at a dis- of uncertainty only grows with time. In On the left, in
tance of less than 7.5 million km from the 2080, this window will be 14,000 km wide, mid-2020, the
Earth. At each close encounter, the aster- which is all-in-all reassuring; but for the en- OSIRIS-REx probe
oid’s trajectory will be influenced by the counter of 2135, the uncertainty in the po- will use its
sition of Bennu TAGSAM device
reaches 160,000 km to lift and collect a
and, since this sample of loose
material from the
crossing will be
surface of the as-
closest to Earth in teroid. That mate-
the coming cen- rial will reach
turies, it is inferable Earth in 2023 to
that an uncertainty be studied.
of that magnitude [NASA/Goddard/
is not reassuring at University of
all, especially if we Arizona]
consider that the
Yarkovsky effect
for this specific as-
teroid could be sig-
nificantly different
from the estimated
one. This is why it is
SMALL BODIES 27
T he Yarkovsky
effect is the
change in the orbit
of an asteroid due
to the thermal
heat it releases.
This effect can
help scientists to
study the orbits of
various asteroids
and even predict if
any of them come
dangerously close
to our planet.
[Alexandra Bolling,
NRAO/AUI/NSF]
Below, natural or
induced emissions
of heat or volatile
elements from the
surface of an aster-
oid produce small
variations in the
orbital velocity
that should not be
underestimated.
[ESA – Science
Office]
so important to accurately know Bennu’s (1999), the Yarkovsky effect has shifted its
energy balance and to precisely trace its orbit by almost 6 km towards the Sun. This
orbit by following the radio signals that may seem a negligible quantity, but over
OSIRIS-REx will send to our antennas for the centuries, and with the possible ampli-
the next few years. Astronomers have cal- fication made by gravitational perturba-
culated that, since Bennu was discovered tions, that modest amount could hide a
real threat. It is worth ac-
knowledging that, if an
asteroid half a kilometer
in diameter and 40 mil-
lion tons of weight (like
Bennu) should ever fall
to Earth, it would release
an energy comparable to
80,000 of the atomic
bombs dropped on Hi-
roshima, causing destruc-
tion on a continental
scale with heavy conse-
quences for the whole
planet.
Experts at the Center for
Near-Earth Object Stud-
ies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory
forecast that, in the sec-
ond half of the next cen-
28 SMALL BODIES
grams is NASA’s Dou-

ble Asteroid Redi- O n the left, an
animation
that illustrates
rection Test (DART),
a space mission (de- how NASA’s DART
(Double Asteroid
rived from the Aster-
Redirection Test)
oid Impact and De- aims and strikes
flection Assessment, the smaller ele-
now canceled) in the ment of the binary
final design and as- asteroid Didymos,
sembly phase. to demonstrate
Its goal is to crash a how a kinetic im-
spacecraft into the pact can poten-
unofficially named tially redirect an
“Didymoon,” the asteroid as part of
the planetary de-
small moon of the
fense program.
asteroid 65803 Didy-
Below, a poster of
mos. The DART mis- the DART mission
sion should take concept.
tury, more precisely in 2175 and 2196, place in 2022 or 2024. The spacecraft is, in [NASA/JHUAPL]
Bennu will approach the Earth close fact, an impactor with a mass of 500 kg,
enough to have 1-in-2700 chance of hitting equipped with navigation instruments only.
it. Although the chances of collision appear
rather remote with our current models, the
Yarkovsky effect on Bennu could alter the
probabilities and increase significantly the
chances after the OSIRIS-REx mission results
are included in the models. The reduction
in the uncertainty of the future positions of
Bennu (and other potentially dangerous as-
teroids) is crucial for us to know to ignore,
or to plan for, possible collisions with our
planet. Unlike what happens in science fic-
tion movies, we cannot destroy an asteroid
by means of nuclear warheads – neither the
small asteroids nor, much less, the large
ones. The only concrete defense is to ap-
propriately modify the orbit of the asteroid
many decades or centuries before the date
of the possible impact, letting the gravita-
tional perturbations of the major bodies
act successively in our favor. The earlier one
intervenes to change an orbit, the less en-
ergy is then required to modify that orbit.
Planetary defense programs have been in
testing for several years, the purposes of
which are to test orbital path deviation
techniques for small asteroids. In short, sci-
entists plan to give those objects a very pre-
cise push, hitting them with spacecraft
launched at very high speeds, possibly even
strengthening the thrust with the explosion
of nuclear warheads. One of these pro-
SMALL BODIES 29
F ourteen Arecibo
radar images
of the near-Earth
Didymos is a small asteroid
780 meters in diameter, sep-
arated by just 1.1 km from
asteroid Didymos Didymoon, whose diameter
and its moon,
does not exceed 160 meters.
taken in November
Even though this binary sys-
2003. The photo-
metric data indi-
tem periodically approaches
cate that Didymos the Earth’s orbit up to a
is a binary system fraction of an astronomical
and radar images unit, it does not fall into the
clearly show the category of Potentially Haz-
secondary body. ardous Asteroids, and there-
[National Science fore any intervention on its
Foundation] orbit will not make it more
threatening in the future.
The effects the DART exper-
iment will produce will be
small but important. The
mission’s designers predict
that the spacecraft will hit Didymoon cen- DART experiment will be followed by
trally at a speed of 6 km/s and will modify ground-based optical and radio telescopes,
the orbital velocity and it will be possible to prove that the
of the little asteroid threat posed by potentially dangerous as-
by about half a mil- teroids can be mitigated by intervening
limeter per second, well in advance on their orbits. Here are
which will result in a two comments from researchers directly in-
variation of the or- volved in the project. The first one by Tom
bital period around Statler, program scientist for DART at NASA
Didymos of about Headquarters: “A binary asteroid is the per-
ten minutes. This fect natural laboratory for this test. The
variation will have fact that Didymoon is in orbit around Didy-
repercussions on the mos makes it easier to see the results of the
orbit of the binary impact”. The second one by Andy Cheng,
system around the of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Labo-
Sun (today taking ratory in Laurel, Maryland and DART inves-
770 days), with the tigation co-lead: “DART is a critical step in
result being that the demonstrating we can protect our planet
orbital velocity will from a future asteroid impact. Since we
change by about 0.4 don’t know that much about their internal
mm/s. It is a seem- structure or composition, we need to per-
ingly insignificant form this experiment on a real asteroid.
value, but in reality With DART, we can show how to protect
exceeds that attrib- Earth from an asteroid strike with a kinetic
utable to the Yar- impactor by knocking the hazardous object
kovsky effect. into a different flight path that would not
If projected over the threaten the planet”.
period of a century, DART will be only a first, shy step towards
this impact will pro- the realization of international programs
duce a spatial posi- of planetary defense, but it is a good start
tioning difference of to be able to prevent the only non-terrestrial
over one million km! natural catastrophe that can be avoided
The aftermath of the with modern technology. !
30 SPACE CHRONICLES
A call for the cold

by ESA
C armen working in the Concordia laboratory.

[ESA/IPEV/PNRA–Filippo Cali Quaglia]
SPACE CHRONICLES 31
A
s the Northern hemisphere Carmen will be replaced by Danish
starts to feel the cold winter medical doctor Nadja Albertsen who
approaching, research sta- is preparing for her stay in the South
tions in Antarctica are emerging and learning about the experiments
from their long dark winter and she will run at ESA’s astronaut centre
awaiting the arrival of fresh supplies in Cologne, Germany, and at the cen-
after living months in isolation. tres of the organisations that own
A truly unique experience, ESA is and run Concordia station, French
calling medical research doctors to Polar Institute IPEV and Italian Polar
spend a year on the ice conducting Institute PNRA.
researching into how humans adapt Nadja will be taking over research
to living in extreme environments – such as how isolation changes peo-
as a stand-in to spaceflight. Do you ple’s brains and blood pressure, and
have what it takes? search for extremophiles that might
The French-Italian Concordia re- be able to survive the extreme cold.
search station in Antarctica has to ESA’s Jennifer Ngo-Anh, responsible
deal with temperatures as low as – for science in space for Human and
80°C, no sunlight for four months Robotic Exploration, explains, “the
and no access at all during the win- work done by our medical doctor in
ter, it is one of
the most remote
and isolated hu-
man outposts.
C oncordia reaching for the stars.
[ESA/IPEV/PNRA–B. Healey]
Its unique loca-

tion and extreme
conditions offer
ESA the chance
to research how
humans adapt to
living far away
from home – sim-
ilar to an outpost
in space or on an-
other planet.
ESA’s current re-
search doctor in the South, Carmen Antarctica is indispensable to be pre-
Possnig, is acting much like an astro- pared for long exploration missions
naut on the International Space beyond our moon”.
Station running experiments for re- “The environment is tough and the
searchers in more comfortable but experience will be no walk in the
less interesting environments and park, but you will have done your
recording the data for analysis. part to further human exploration of
The team of up to 15 people who our Solar System and I guarantee
live in Concordia throughout the you will never forget it.”
winter started to prepare for the ar- Are you interested in the adventure
rival of the “summer scientists” in of a lifetime or know somebody who
November. After months of living on might be? ESA is looking for the next
their own, now the research station research doctor, who will travel to
hosts around 80 scientists who flock Concordia in 2019 to run experi-
to Concordia to check equipment, ments in this unique setting. A med-
C oncordia station.
[ESA/IPEV/PNRA–C. Possnig]
setup sensors and run experiments
for a few weeks.
ical degree and an ESA member
state nationality is required. !
32 SPACE CHRONICLES
CERN, ALMA and ESO

launch art residency
program, Symmetry
by ALMA Observatory
T
he Symmetry
program was
launched to
foster interdiscipli-
nary exchange be-
tween artists and
scientists working or
living in Chile and
Switzerland. It com-
bines the residency
of two artists in
three of the most
fascinating scientific
research centers in
the world: the Large
Hadron Collider,
CERN, in Geneva,
Switzerland, and
the astronomic ob-
servatories in Chile:
ALMA and the VLT
in Cerro Paranal.
Symmetry will invite
one artist from Chile The names of the artists who will participate in the first version of the Symmetry residency
program were announced at the “Fourth Meeting of Art, Science and Digital Culture” held in
and one artist from the Museum of Visual Arts (MAVI) in Santiago, Chile. In the image, visual concert by Carlos
Switzerland to a Cabezas, Chilean musician, founder of the band Electrodomésticos, who presented the result of
shared residency in his residency at ALMA. [Benjamin Matte, CChV]
each country. The
experience seeks to connect artists gies that explore and observe na- thinking, by fostering deep conver-
with the community of physicists ture. “I am proud to launch Symme- sations and dialog between artists
and engineers to further delve into try, which I am sure it will make a and scientists in Chile and Switzer-
the challenges of contemporary sci- significant contribution to the cur- land,” says Mónica Bello, Head of
ence through advanced technolo- rent challenges in interdisciplinary Arts at CERN.
SPACE CHRONICLES 33
In this first version, 8 artists

from each country were in-
vited to present their portfo-
lios, which were reviewed by
members of the participating
institutions to select the final
candidates to form part of this
Residency: Nicole L’Huillier
from Chile and Alan Bogana
from Switzerland. The an-
nouncement of the selected
artists was made at the 4th
Meeting of Art, Science and
Digital Culture in the Museum
of Visual Arts (MAVI), in Santi-
ago, Chile. The Minister of
Culture, Art and Heritage,
Consuelo Valdés, who partici-
pated in the event and sup-
ports the initiative, high-
lighted the alliances behind
this project and revealed that: “We Chilean Andes, where 66 antennas
are convinced that the dialogue be-
tween art, science and culture it will
from the ALMA radio telescope are
located, and also the Very Large Tel-
A rtist Laura Couto Rosado with sci-
entific partner James Beacham at
CERN. [Sophia Elizabeth Bennett/CERN]
nourish us of significant experiences escope, an Observatory located in
for the cultural development for Cerro Paranal near Antofagasta. In ALMA are part of this initiative, be-
which we all work“. Switzerland, the artists will be guest cause art and science raise the spirits
Selected artists will visit the remote residents at CERN in Geneva. and remind us of the importance of
Chajnantor Plateau in the northern “I am very pleased that the VLT and treasuring the dimension of creativ-
ity, curiosity and discovery that, in a
sense, defines us as humans and
therefore should never be forgot-
ten,” adds Claudio Melo, Represen-
tative of the European Southern
Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
Symmetry is a collaboration be-
tween Arts at CERN, ALMA, ESO and
the Chilean Corporation of Video
and Electronic Arts, made possible
by support from the Swiss Arts
Council Pro Helvetia and the Chilean
Ministry of Cultures, Art and Her-
itage through its New Media Area.
“The shared residency of two artists
in two of the most extraordinary re-
search centers in the fields of astron-
omy and particle physics will enable
us to expand and explore the con-
nections between new creative
forms,” indicates Enrique Rivera, Di-
I n the image, the Minister of Culture of Chile talks with the director of the
Arts at CERN program, Monica Bello. [Benjamin Matte, CChV] rector of the Chilean Corporation of
Video and Electronic Arts. !
34 SPACE CHRONICLES
The ghost of
Cassiopeia
by NASA/ESA
I C 63 — nicknamed the Ghost Nebula

— is about 550 light-years from
Earth. The nebula is classified as both
a reflection nebula — as it is reflecting
the light of a nearby star — and as an
emission nebula — as it releases hy-
drogen-alpha radiation. Both effects
are caused by the gigantic star Gamma
Cassiopeiae. The radiation of this star
is also slowly causing the nebula to
dissipate. [ESA/Hubble, NASA]
SPACE CHRONICLES
A
lso known
as the
ghost of
Cassiopeia, IC 63
is being shaped
by radiation from
a nearby unpre-
dictably variable
star, Gamma Cas-
siopeiae, which is
slowly eroding
away the ghostly
T his image shows the sky around the nebula IC 63,
nicknamed the Ghost Nebula. It was created from im-
cloud of dust and ages forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The
gas. The constel- field of view is dominated by the bright star Gamma
lation of Cassio- Cassiopeiae, which is having a profound influence on IC
peia, named after 63. [ESA/Hubble, NASA, Digitized Sky Survey 2]
a vain queen in
Greek mythology, forms the easily gen-alpha radiation — visible in red
recognisable “W” shape in the in this image. This hydrogen-alpha
night sky. The central point of the radiation makes IC 63 an emission
W is marked by a dramatic star: nebula, but we also see blue light
here is Gamma Cassiopeiae. in this image. This is light from
The remarkable Gamma Cassio- Gamma Cassiopeiae that has been
peiae is a blue-white subgiant vari- reflected by dust particles in the
able star that is surrounded by a nebula, meaning that IC 63 is also a
gaseous disc. This star is 19 times reflection nebula.
more massive and 65,000 times This colourful and ghostly nebula is
brighter than our Sun. It also ro- slowly dissipating under the influ-
tates at the incredible speed of 1.6 ence of ultraviolet radiation from
million kilometres per hour — more Gamma Cassiopeiae.
than 200 times faster than our par- However, IC 63 is not the only ob-
ent star. This frenzied rotation gives ject under the influence of the
it a squashed appearance. The fast mighty star. It is part of a much
rotation causes eruptions of mass larger nebulous region surrounding
from the star into a surrounding Gamma Cassiopeiae that measures
disk. This mass loss is related to the approximately two degrees on the
observed brightness variations. sky — roughly four times as wide as
The radiation of Gamma Cassio- the full Moon.
peiae is so powerful that it even af- This region is best seen from the
fects IC 63, sometimes nicknamed Northern Hemisphere during au-
the Ghost Nebula, that lies several tumn and winter. Though it is high
light years away from the star. IC 63 in the sky and visible all year round
is visible in this image taken by the from Europe, it is very dim, so ob-
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. serving it requires a fairly large tel-
The colours in the eerie nebula escope and dark skies.
showcase how it is affected by the From above Earth’s atmosphere,
powerful radiation from the distant Hubble gives us a view that we can-
star. The hydrogen within IC 63 is not hope to see with our eyes. This
being bombarded with ultraviolet photo is possibly the most detailed
radiation from Gamma Cassiopeiae, image that has ever been taken of
causing its electrons to gain energy IC 63, and it beautifully showcases
which they later release as hydro- Hubble’s capabilities. !
36 SPACE CHRONICLES
ALMA and MUSE detect

galactic fountain
by ESO low as minus 250–260°C, were found Tremblay explained. “The two facili-
to be falling inwards to the black ties make for an incredibly powerful
hole. The team also used data from combination.”
A
mere one billion light-years the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Together these two sets of data form
away in the nearby galaxy Large Telescope to track warmer gas a complete picture of the process;
cluster known as Abell 2597, — which is being launched out of the cold gas falls towards the black hole,
there lies a gargantuan galactic black hole in the form of jets. igniting the black hole and causing it
fountain. A massive black hole at the “The unique aspect here is a very de- to launch fast-moving jets of incan-
heart of a distant galaxy has been tailed coupled analysis of the source descent plasma into the void. These
observed pumping a vast spout of using data from ALMA and MUSE,” jets then spout from the black hole in
cold molecular gas into a spectacular galactic foun-
space, which then rains back tain. With no hope of escap-
onto the black hole as an in- ing the galaxy’s gravitational
tergalactic deluge. The in- clutches, the plasma cools
and outflow of such a vast off, slows down, and eventu-
cosmic fountain has never ally rains back down on the
before been observed in black hole, where the cycle
combination, and has its ori- begins anew.
gin in the innermost 100,000 This unprecedented observa-
light-years of the brightest tion could shed light on the
galaxy in the Abell 2597 life cycle of galaxies. The
cluster. “This is possibly the team speculates that this
first system in which we find process may be not only
clear evidence for both cold common, but also essential
molecular gas inflow toward to understanding galaxy for-
the black hole and outflow mation. While the inflow
or uplift from the jets that and outflow of cold molecu-
the black hole launches,” lar gas have both previously
explained Grant Tremblay been detected, this is the first
of the Harvard-Smithsonian time both have been de-
Center for Astrophysics and tected within one system,
former ESO Fellow, who led and hence the first evidence
this study. “The supermas- that the two make up part of
sive black hole at the centre C omposite image of the Abell 2597 galaxy cluster show-
ing the fountain-like flow of gas powered by the super-
of this giant galaxy acts like massive black hole in the central galaxy. The yellow is ALMA
the same vast process.
Abell 2597 is found in the
a mechanical pump in a data showing cold gas. The red is data from the MUSE in- constellation Aquarius, and
fountain.” strument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope showing the hot is named for its inclusion in
Tremblay and his team used hydrogen gas in the same region. The blue-purple is the ex- the Abell catalogue of rich
ALMA to track the position tended hot, ionized gas as imaged by the Chandra X-ray Ob- clusters of galaxies.
and motion of molecules of servatory. The yellow ALMA data shows infalling material The catalogue also includes
and the red MUSE data shows material launched in a vast
carbon monoxide within the such clusters as the Fornax
spout by the black hole. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Tremblay
nebula. These cold mole- et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, B. Saxton; NASA/Chandra; ESO/VLT] cluster, the Hercules cluster,
cules, with temperatures as and Pandora’s cluster. !
www.newmoontelescopes.com ryan@newmoontelescopes.com
panspermia EN_l'Astrofilo 25/12/2018 12:08 Page 38
38 ASTROBIOLOGY
TRAPPIST-1 plan
a panspermia te
by Michele Ferrara
“Once all our attempts

to obtain living matter
from inanimate matter
are vain, it seems to
me to be part of a fully
correct scientific proce-
dure to ask oneself
whether life has in fact
ever had an origin, if it
is not as old as the mat-
ter itself, and if spores
could not have been
transported from one
planet to another and
took root where they T he planets of TRAPPIST-1, represented in this il-
lustration, constitute a dynamically perfect sys-
found fertile ground.” tem for testing the concept of panspermia. If life can
move from one planet to another, it is very likely
Hermann von Helmholtz that it could do it inside systems like this. [NASA]
ASTROBIOLOGY 39
anets,
testbed
A
bout the diffusion of life in the universe, we acids and proteins necessary for life; they know how to
have only one certainty: it is present on our do it by simulating the likely terrestrial environment bil-
planet. Any region of the Earth, even the most lions of years ago, but no scientist has so far managed
inhospitable, pullulates with life. Chemistry, biology to take the decisive step of transforming complex or-
and paleontology have discovered a great deal about ganic molecules into self-replicating living organisms.
current and past forms of life on our planet. However, This apparent inability to generate life here on Earth
in spite of great scientific and technological progress in beginning from its fundamental building blocks has re-
the last decades, we still do not know how and when peatedly reinvigorated the panspermia hypothesis, ac-
the first living organisms appeared. cording to which life has spread in the cosmos through
Since the pioneering laboratory experiments of Stanley “seeds” transported by interstellar dust, meteoroids
Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s, nothing has substan- and comets of various sizes. Perhaps the young Earth
tially changed: biochemists know how to produce amino did not have the necessary requisites to generate life,
but it was nonetheless suitable for hosting

species from outside. As we do not know
a philosopher of ancient Greece and very
careful observer of celestial phenomena. T he impact of
an asteroid on
a young Mars could
the environment in which that “adopted” One must wait until the 19th century to see
life may have been born, we are not able to the proposition of panspermia in a more sci- have thrown many
rocks into space,
recreate it in the laboratory. entific context, then further strengthened
perhaps containing
This is evidently a hypothesis of conven- in the following century, mainly thanks to
colonies of ex-
ience, a solution that does not solve the two giants of astronomy − Fred Hoyle and tremophile bacte-
problem, but instead transfers it to un- Chandra Wickramasinghe. In the 1970s, ria, which contin-
known times and places. The concept of they hypothesized that interstellar dust ued to proliferate
panspermia is, however, interesting be- could contain organic molecules (a hypoth- for decades. When
cause, from a theoretical point of view, life esis then verified) and that forms of ele- part of those rocks
could certainly move from one celestial mentary life are continuously entering the fell to Earth, the
body to another. atmosphere (a hypothesis never verified). surviving bacteria
This idea dates back to 25 centuries ago. The More recently, in 2009, Stephen Hawking found a hospitable
first to spread the notion was Anaxagoras, also came out in support of panspermia as environment to
a possible explana- conquer. [NASA]
tion for the spread
of living organisms
between planets and
solar systems.
In October 2017,
with the discovery of
`Oumuamua, we re-
ceived confirmation
that a meteoroid (or
a cometoid) can ac-
tually travel from
one planetary system
to another, and
these wandering ob-
jects might exist in
the billions of bil-
ASTROBIOLOGY 41
A s this graphic
shows, the
TRAPPIST-1 sys-
tem is so compact
that it can be eas-
ily contained in-
side the orbit of
Mercury. The
green areas high-
light the habitable
zones of the two
systems. Below,
the TRAPPIST-1
system seen from
its outermost
planet, TRAPPIST-
1h. [NASA]
lions of members within our galaxy. If seem much more likely that a meteoroid
panspermia were a consolidated reality, the with a vital load can fall right on a hos-
universe could be teeming with life and our pitable planet after an interstellar journey
most distant ancestors could have been ex- of hundreds of thousands or millions of
traterrestrials − two non-negligible conse- years. Even the most basic colonies of bac-
quences. Nevertheless, there are many teria and the simplest spores we know can-
arguments against panspermia. Interstellar not remain viable for such long periods of
space is so vast that astronomers calculated time. Moreover, in order for meteoroids to
a collision between two single stars has be able to transport these organisms, it is
never happened in our galaxy; it does not necessary that the planet hosting those
forms of life suffers heavy-
enough asteroid impacts to
throw rock fragments beyond
the escape velocity of the
planet’s gravity well. This pre-
supposes the existence of at
least an asteroid belt and a pe-
riod of intense bombardment
triggered by planetary migra-
tion. We do not know within
how many planetary systems
this has happened, so we can-
not even remotely estimate the
average number of meteoroids
expelled by a typical planetary
system - this also because we
know almost nothing about the
architecture and evolutionary
history of extrasolar systems.
42 ASTROBIOLOGY
Simulations indicate
that most peripheral B etween 2008
and 2010, a
colony of ex-
rocks thrown into
space reach tempera- tremophile bac-
teria called
tures below 100°C.
Gloecapsa, taken
On might conclude
from the cliffs of
that the trauma of the Beer, in Devon,
fall to Earth seems im- UK (pictured left),
possible to overcome, was placed out-
either for the piece of side the Interna-
rock or for the organ- tional Space
isms it might contain. Station (below),
However, various stud- only protected
ies have shown that by the rocks that
entry into the atmos- housed it. Re-
phere occurs at speeds turned to Earth
after 553 days,
The uncertainties about what may have between 12 and 20 km/s, and the friction
the rock samples
happened elsewhere beyond our Solar Sys- produced creates a melting crust around the still contained a
tem have prompted researchers to focus on meteoroid which prevents any penetration large number of
panspermia within “our home”, in particu- of the excessive heating beyond the first viable bacteria.
lar on the possibility that life has come to few millimeters. This would protect the hy- [NASA, Open
Earth from Mars (or vice versa). We know pothetical organisms from overheating dur- University]
that in the first billion years, the Red Planet ing this critical atmospheric entry phase.
could host elementary forms of life. We also Finally, the impact with the ground for
know that between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years something like a single-celled organism is
ago, the rocky planets suffered an intense less violent than we might imagine at first
asteroid bombardment. Finally, we know
that numerous meteorites originating from
Martian rocks thrown into space during that
bombing (and more recently too) have
ended up plunging to Earth.
The whole process has been scrutinized by
scientists with sufficient precision, and al-
though there is no evidence that terrestrial
life descends from Martian organisms, the
proximity between the orbits of the two
planets allows the three phases of pansper-
mia, i.e. initial expulsion, interplanetary
travel and final fall, to be surmountable
obstacles. Mathematical models and exper-
iments in the laboratory and in low Earth
orbit have shown that extremophile bacte-
ria and spores are able to withstand violent
accelerations and decelerations, as well as sight, since the speed has already fallen to
prolonged exposure to solar and cosmic ra- a few tens of meters per second. In fact, a
diation. meteorite may even remain intact if it im-
It may seem strange that something survives pacts a soft soil or the water.
the energy triggered by an asteroid collision We do not know to what extent the models
on Mars, but we have to imagine that the of this process are applicable to other plan-
land adjacent to the point of impact takes etary systems, also because the three phases
off from simple recoil and the only trauma of panspermia have always been modeled
organisms have to overcome is acceleration. and simulated separately from each other,
ASTROBIOLOGY 43
A photo of
the bacteria
colony surviving
and the outcome of each of them depends
on numerous varying factors.
other and decidedly coplanar. The semima-
jor axes range from 1.73 million km for the
Only recently, researchers attempted to innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1b, to 9.27 mil-
the experiment merge the various solutions into a single lion km for the outermost planet, TRAPPIST-
called OU-20,
model, however unavoidably generic. A 1h. The planets graze each other at dis-
which lasted a
push in this direction has been from the dis- tances between 2 and 6 times the Earth-
year and a half
outside the ISS. covery, between 2015 and 2017, of seven Moon distance!
Below, Professor planets in orbit around the red dwarf TRAP- Despite being so close to their star, TRAP-
Charles Cockell, PIST-1. This system has awakened the inter- PIST-1 is so weak an energy source that some
from the Open est in panspermia, because its planets are all of its planets orbit in its habitable zone,
University, with a comparable in size to Earth (from 0.77 to making this system theoretically ideal for
sample of rock 1.14 times the Earth’s diameter) and five of carrying out panspermia studies, as high-
impregnated with them also have masses comparable to that lighted in a work published at the end of Oc-
the bacteria pro- of Earth. But the most interesting feature of tober in Astrobiology Magazine with the
tagonists of the the TRAPPIST-1 system is represented by the title “Dynamical and biological panspermia
OU-20 experi-
orbits of the planets, very close to each constraints within multi-planet exosystems”.
ment. [NASA,
Open University]
In this paper, a small team of researchers

led by Dimitri Veras (University of Warwick,
physical and chemical properties of each
planet, information that is currently out of I maginative rep-
resentation of a
glimpse of the sur-
Coventry) proposes the unification and our reach. At the moment, the equations
extension to other planetary systems of produced by Veras’ team are just a tool that face of a habitable
TRAPPIST-1 planet.
panspermia models based on our Solar Sys-
In an environment
tem. Here is how Veras commented on this:
of this kind, any
“Equations regarding the physics of impact elementary form
have already been established and used for of life from a
Solar System applications, so we converted nearby planet
those for use in a general extra-solar sys- could easily prolif-
tem.” “Usually, the dynamics of panspermia erate. [NASA]
is studied with numerical simulations, how- On the side, the
ever, these can be slow to run and must be astrophysicist Dim-
tailored to an individual system.” “Alterna- itri Veras, first au-
tively, analytics are much faster to use and thor of a recent
work on pansper-
are general enough to be applicable to a
mia in extrasolar
wide variety of systems.”
systems. [Univer-
And analytics are certainly applicable to the sity of Warwick,
TRAPPIST-1 system, for which it would be Coventry]
possible to calculate with approximation the
likelihood life has been shared among sev-
eral planets given assumptions about certain
45
in the future will few weeks or months, ensuring the integrity

help other re- of the vital load. Unfortunately, the more
searchers to estab- those planets are studied, the less they seem
lish whether, from hospitable to life as we know it. The great-
the dynamic point est unknown concerns the existence and
of view, pansper- consistency of atmospheres, as well as the
mia is possible in presence of land. According to a study by re-
multiple planetary searchers from Arizona State University and
systems. Vanderbilt University, between 20% and
In a system struc- 50% of the mass of TRAPPIST-1 planets
tured like TRAPPIST- would consist of water (Earth = 0.2%). The
1 it is very probable deep global oceans that, in this case, would
that elementary cover the planetary surfaces would inhibit
forms of life are the geochemical cycles necessary to main-
able to move from tain an atmosphere and would instead
one planet to an- favor the “snowball” effect.
other, because the Since there are no better candidates, we
interplanetary jour- just have to wait for new discoveries. Find-
O n the right,
some speci-
mens of Bacillus
ney of the material in
which they could take
shelter would be quite
pumilus. Microor- short, on average.
ganisms of this
Note that stellar and
type can form en-
cosmic radiation ex-
dospores − tough,
dormant, and posure is the worst
non-reproductive threat to the pansper-
structures that mia hypothesis.
allow it to survive The experiments con-
harsh conditions ducted so far tell us
and extreme envi- that colonies of ex-
ronments. The tremophile bacteria ex-
tough shells of the posed to outer space
endospores pro- in low Earth orbit can survive well over a ing any evidence of life, even as a fossil, on
vide the organism
year if sheltered by the rock. Under ideal Mars that shares chemical similarities with
with the means to
conditions of protection, a very large colony life on Earth, or recognizing identical bio-
protect its genetic
material from cos- can probably survive for decades or cen- markers in the atmospheres of two exo-
mic radiation and turies. What if there were extraterrestrial planets of the same extrasolar system, could
other factors. forms of life able to survive in space for mil- lend support to the panspermia hypothesis,
[Science Photo lennia? In the TRAPPIST-1 system, the three and our conception of the diffusion of life
Library] phases of panspermia could occur within a in the cosmos would radically change. !
46 SPACE CHRONICLES
Hubble reveals a giant

cosmic “bat shadow”
by NASA/ESA
T his image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble

Space Telescope shows the Serpens Nebula, a
stellar nursery about 1300 light-years away. Within
the nebula, in the upper right of the image, a
shadow is created by the protoplanetary disc sur-
rounding the star HBC 672. While the disc of debris
is too tiny to be seen even by Hubble, its shadow is
projected upon the cloud in which it was born. In
this view, the feature — nicknamed the Bat Shadow
— spans approximately 200 times the diameter of
our own Solar System. [NASA, ESA, and STScI]
SPACE CHRONICLES 47
T
he NASA/ESA Hubble Space — approximately 200 times the di-
Telescope has captured part ameter of our own Solar System.
of the wondrous Serpens Neb- The disc’s shadow is similar to that
ula, lit up by the star HBC 672. This produced by a cylindrical lamp
young star casts a striking shadow — shade. Light escapes from the top
nicknamed the Bat Shadow — on and bottom of the shade, but
the nebula behind it, revealing tell- along its circumference, dark cones
tale signs of its otherwise invisible of shadow form.
protoplanetary disc. The disc itself is so small and far
The Serpens Nebula, located in the away from Earth that not even
tail of the Serpent (Serpens Cauda) Hubble can detect it encircling its
about 1300 light-years away, is a re- host star. However, the shadow fea-
flection nebula that owes most of its ture — nicknamed the Bat Shadow
sheen to the light emitted by stars — reveals details of the disc’s shape
like HBC 672 — a young star nestled and nature. The presence of a
in its dusty folds. In this image the shadow implies that the disc is
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope being viewed nearly edge-on.
has exposed two vast cone-like shad- Whilst most of the shadow is com-
ows emanating from HBC 672. pletely opaque, scientists can look
for colour differences along its
edges, where some light gets
through. Using the shape and
colour of the shadow, they can de-
termine the size and composition
of dust grains in the disc.
The whole Serpens Nebula, of
which this image shows only a tiny
part, could host more of these
shadow projections. The nebula en-
velops hundreds of young stars,
many of which could also be in the
process of forming planets in a pro-
toplanetary disc.
Although shadow-casting discs are
common around young stars, the
combination of an edge-on view-
T his animation compares the ap-

pearance of the Serpens Nebula
as seen from the ground — with the
ing angle and the surrounding
nebula is rare. However, in an un-
likely coincidence, a similar looking
Very Large Telescope of the European shadow phenomenon can be seen
Southern Observatory, and from
emanating from another young
space — with the NASA/ESA Hubble
star, in the upper left of the image.
Space Telescope. Both instruments
used detectors and filters observing
These precious insights into proto-
in the near-infrared to gather their planetary discs around young stars
data. [NASA, ESA/Hubble, ESO] allow astronomers to study our
own past. The planetary system we
These colossal shadows on the Ser- live in once emerged from a similar
pens Nebula are cast by the proto- protoplanetary disc when the Sun
planetary disc surrounding HBC was only a few million years old. By
672. By clinging tightly to the star studying these distant discs we get
the disc creates an imposing to uncover the formation and evo-
shadow, much larger than the disc lution of our own cosmic home. !
48 SPACE CHRONICLES
Gaia uncovers major

event in the formation
of the Milky Way
by ESA
E
SA’s Gaia mission has made a
major breakthrough in unravel-
ling the formation history of the
Milky Way.
Instead of forming alone, our Galaxy
merged with another large galaxy
early in its life, around 10 billion
years ago. The evidence is littered
across the sky all around us, but it
has taken Gaia and its extraordinary
precision to show us what has been
hiding in plain sight all along.
Gaia measures the position, move-
ment and brightness of stars to un-
precedented levels of accuracy.
Using the first 22 months of observa-
tions, a team of astronomers led by
Amina Helmi, University of Gronin-
gen, The Netherlands, looked at
seven million stars – those for which
the full 3D positions and velocities
are available – and found that some
30,000 of them were part of an ‘odd
collection’ moving through the
Milky Way. The observed stars in par-
ticular are currently passing by our
solar neighbourhood. We are so
deeply embedded in this collection
that its stars surround us almost
completely, and so can be seen
across most of the sky.
Even though they are interspersed
with other stars, the stars in the col-
lection stood out in the Gaia data
SPACE CHRONICLES 49
Way. The stars now form

most of our Galaxy’s inner
halo – a diffuse compo-
nent of old stars that
were born at early times
and now surround the
main bulk of the Milky
Way known as the central
bulge and disc.
The galactic disc itself is
composed of two parts.
There is the thin disc,
which is a few hundred
light years deep and con-
tains the pattern of spiral
arms made by bright stars.
And there is the thick
disc, which is a few thou-
sand light years deep. It
contains about 10–20 per-
cent of the Galaxy’s stars
yet its origins have been
difficult to determine.
According to the team’s
simulations, as well as
supplying the halo stars,
tinct stellar population. the accreted galaxy could also have
T wo artist’s impression of the
merger between the Gaia-Ence-
ladus galaxy and our Milky Way,
The sheer number of
odd-moving stars in-
disturbed the Milky Way’s pre-exist-
ing stars to help form the thick disc.
which took place during our Galaxy’s volved intrigued Ami- “We became only certain about our
early formation stages, 10 billion na and her colleagues, interpretation after complementing
years ago. [ESA (artist’s impression who suspected they the Gaia data with additional infor-
and composition); Koppelman, Villa- might have something mation about the chemical composi-
lobos and Helmi (simulation); to do with the Milky tion of stars, supplied by the ground-
NASA/ESA/Hubble (galaxy image)] Way’s formation history based APOGEE survey,” says Carine
and set to work to un- Babusiaux, Université Grenoble Alpes,
because they all move derstand their origins. France, and second author of the
along elongated tra- In the past, Amina and her research paper.
jectories in the oppo- group had used computer simula- Stars that form in different galaxies
site direction to the tions to study what happens to stars have unique chemical compositions
majority of the Gal- when two large galaxies merge. that match the conditions of the
axy’s other hundred When she compared those to the home galaxy. If this star collection
billion stars, including Gaia data, the simulated results was indeed the remains of a galaxy
the Sun. matched the observations. “The col- that merged with our own, the stars
They also stood out lection of stars we found with Gaia should show an imprint of this in
in the so-called Hertz- has all the properties of what you their composition. And they did.
sprung-Russell diagram would expect from the debris of a The astronomers called this galaxy
– which is used to com- galactic merger,” says Amina. Gaia-Enceladus after one of the Gi-
pare the colour and In other words, the collection is what ants in ancient Greek mythology, who
brightness of stars – they expected from stars that were was the offspring of Gaia, the Earth,
indicating that they once part of another galaxy and and Uranus, the Sky. “According to
belong to a clearly dis- have been consumed by the Milky the legend, Enceladus was buried
50 SPACE CHRONICLES
A ll-sky distribution of an ‘odd

collection’ of stars detected in
the second data release of ESA’s
Gaia mission. These stars move
along elongated trajectories in the
opposite direction to the majority
of our Milky Way’s other hundred
billion stars and have a markedly
different chemical composition, in-
dicating that they belong to a
clearly distinct stellar population.
[ESA/Gaia/DPAC; A. Helmi et al 2018]
under Mount Etna, in Sicily, and re-

sponsible for local earthquakes. Sim-
ilarly, the stars of Gaia-Enceladus
were deeply buried in the Gaia data, together by their mutual gravity and Way. Ten billion years ago, however,
and they have shaken the Milky orbiting the centre of a galaxy. The when the merger with Gaia-Ence-
Way, leading to the formation of its fact that so many clusters could be ladus took place, the Milky Way itself
thick disc,” explains Amina. linked to Gaia-Enceladus is another was much smaller, so the ratio be-
Even though no more evidence was indication that this must have once tween the two was more like four to
really needed, the team also found been a big galaxy in its own right, one. It was therefore clearly a major
hundreds of variable stars and 13 with its own entourage of globular blow to our Galaxy.
globular clusters in the Milky Way clusters. “Seeing that we are now starting to
that follow similar trajectories as the Further analysis revealed that this unravel the formation history of the
stars from Gaia-Enceladus, indicat- galaxy was about the size of one of Milky Way is very exciting,” says An-
ing that they were originally part of the Magellanic Clouds – two satellite thony Brown, Leiden University, The
that system. Globular clusters are galaxies roughly ten times smaller Netherlands, who is a co-author of
groups of up to millions of stars, held than the current size of the Milky the paper and also chair of the Gaia
Data Processing and Analysis Con-
sortium Executive.
Since the very first discussions about
building Gaia 25 years ago, one of
the mission’s key objectives was to
examine the various stellar streams
in the Milky Way, and reconstruct its
early history. That vision is paying
off. “Gaia was built to answer such
questions,” says Amina. “We can
now say this is the way the Galaxy
formed in those early epochs. It’s
fantastic. It’s just so beautiful and
makes you feel so big and so small
at the same time.”
“By reading the motions of stars
scattered across the sky, we are now
able to rewind the history of the
Milky Way and discover a major
C omputer simulation of the merger between a galaxy like the young Milky
Way, whose stars are shown in cyan, and a smaller galaxy, indicated in red.
[Koppelman, Villalobos & Helmi, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of
milestone in its formation, and this
is possible thanks to Gaia,” con-
Groningen, The Netherlands] cludes Timo Prusti, Gaia project sci-
entist at ESA. !
chronicles FR_l'Astrofilo 29/12/2018 10:20 Page 51
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Barnard's Star B, The Nearest Super-Earth

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qxp_l'astrofilo 25/12/2018 11:58 Page 1

Bi-monthly magazine of scientific and technical information ✶ January-February 2019

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Barnard’s Star, which for over a

The fast motion and the relative proximity

Let’s open a brief parenthesis on this survey

T his video shows Barnard’s Star and its

research team undertook, from 2016 to

I n this video, we fly over the surface of

The combination of new measurements tance in the Barnard’s Star

mature star system, could question

Most detailed observation

E SO's exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to

to a European institutions, including

mense mass is known as the inner-

A LMA image of Jupiter’s moon

emission,” said Samantha Trumbo, a

First light for

Two stars almost

Bennu. It is no coincidence that

position becomes even

grams is NASA’s Dou-

A call for the cold

C armen working in the Concordia laboratory.

Its unique loca-

CERN, ALMA and ESO

In this first version, 8 artists

I C 63 — nicknamed the Ghost Nebula

ALMA and MUSE detect

“Once all our attempts

but it was nonetheless suitable for hosting

In this paper, a small team of researchers

in the future will few weeks or months, ensuring the integrity

Hubble reveals a giant

T his image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble

T his animation compares the ap-

Gaia uncovers major

Way. The stars now form

A ll-sky distribution of an ‘odd

under Mount Etna, in Sicily, and re-

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